Ethics

Bush Gives Colson a Medal

By Ed Brayton

There is an interesting new blog called Secular Right offers the perspective of conservatives who are not religious and who generally see the dangers of religious conservatism. The contributors include our own Razib Khan of Gene Expression. Walter Olson is also a contributor and he posts about President Bush recently awarded a Presidential Citizens Medal to Chuck Colson.

As Olson notes, Colson has received a great deal of praise for his prison ministry work at rehabilitating inmates, though as Mark Kleiman pointed out a few years ago, the claims of success for that work depends on cherry picking the data and ignoring much of it. But there's more to it than that. There is also Colson's past as a political hatchet man for Nixon, a time during which he actually plotted (with G. Gordon Liddy) to commit domestic terrorism. And I agree entirely with Olson on this aspect:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on December 15, 2008 (boomark / email).